This week we’re chatting all about animation and how South African animation studio created the short film Aau’s Song for the Volume Two of Star Wars: Visions.
We’re sitting down with Nadia Darries and Daniel Clarke, who co-directed Aau’s Song, to talk about the inspiration behind the story and how to become an animator yourself.
Before that though we’ve got some news to dive into.
First up the Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) has issued diplomatic to BRICS leaders attending the BRICS Summit being held in Johannesburg in August. Among these leaders are Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Importantly, this diplomatic immunity does not override any warrant issued by any international tribunal ahead of the Summit.
Then, Google DeepMind and OpenAI signed a single sentence statement issued by the Centre for AI Safety regarding how development of AI should be approached. “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war,” the statement reads. Unfortunately the statement doesn’t include a promise to pause development of AI.
Finally, we had the chance to review Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. The short story is that it’s great and the team has repeated the success it found in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Be sure to read our spoiler free review at the links below.
